By Lily Kubota As with all industries, specialty coffee has a number of long-standing premises that, founded or not, are often taken as something akin to gospel. One of these premises is that better coffee equals higher prices (and therefore, economic sustainability for producers), and that economic sustainability can drive other facets of sustainability. At …
By Ric Rhinehart It was in 2000 that Google employees Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel first wrote a phrase on a conference room whiteboard, three little words that would become the unofficial statement of corporate values for the company: “Don’t Be Evil.” The phrase, akin to the medical version of “First, do no harm,” was …
By Peter Giuliano As we all know, coffee is a uniquely global product. Grown only within the tropics and typically consumed outside of them, coffee is one of the rare luxuries that transcends boundaries and cultures. This unique element creates a deeply, completely global industry where we regularly use names and words from a number of different …
How to Find Charity (Even) When Deciding Not to By Tim Castle No matter who they are or what they do, people look for connections and community. After all, it’s not for nothing that we call ourselves “social animals.” right now, it’s “social media” and a digital “social network,” but 10,000 years ago it was …
By Tracy Ging About a year ago at the annual roasters Guild retreat, we posed the question in the roundtable discussions, “is fair Trade dead?” We selected the subject because it was a trending topic. in side conversations, blog comments and on the roasters Guild forum, people were discussing the purpose of an additional premium …
By Lily Kubota Mac vs. PC. Facebook vs. Twitter. NBC vs. ABC vs. Fox. We live in a world of competition, one in which companies knock their opponents in ads, product devotees push their favorites and make fun of the others in YouTube videos, and customers are expected, always, to choose a side. It is, …
What it Means when Baristas Compete By Tracy Ging “What’s the deal with barista competitions?” That, it seems, is a common question from some members of the coffee industry. Many people know what the competitions are, they understand how they work, but all-in-all, they find that the whole production resembles a Christopher Guest movie—while they …
By Nicholas Cho I’m doing it over together with Trish. And by “it,” I mean “it” in terms of the coffee business. After building up two coffeebars, coaching four USBC Regional Champions, and establishing a great reputation for our coffee program, I’m starting from scratch now, and I can’t tell you how excited I am …
By Trish Rothgeb Recently, I was asked to sit on a panel with a handful of other industry people to discuss, “How we got here.” Which apparently meant, as one of my colleagues so insightfully and somewhat facetiously observed, “We must have arrived!” My response was: “Really? Hey, that’s great!” The reality was more like …
The Regional Strategy of Alterra Coffee Written by Tracy Ging / Interview with Lincoln Fowler The age of Facebook seems to teach the value of scale and global connectedness. Concepts of local seem a bit quaint…and business strategies predicated on local connectedness simply seem out of touch. Or are they? When Facebook connects people in …